23/08/2026
WHY “FOUND” DOESN’T ALWAYS MEAN “SAVED” FOR AUSTRALIAN TELEVISION
Let me put this scenario to you:
A television program has been lost for decades. Then, unexpectedly, by pure luck, the original tapes turn up here at the Australian Television Archive.
For me, that is the exciting part, everyone loves this part! Something considered gone forever has somehow survived.
But before we can celebrate, I contact the content or rights holder.
They are thrilled to hear of the good news and they would love to have copies returned to their collection.
Then reality enters the conversation: (Money!)
The material did not simply appear because the tapes magically materialised in front of me. Nor will it convert itself into a digital file. Ageing videotape has to be assessed, often cleaned or treated, played on increasingly specialist equipment, recovered, digitised, checked and stored long term as a data file, backed up with a whole IT infrastructure and servers. This costs enormous sums of money.
More often than not, once real world costs are discussed, the interest the rights holder originally showed rapidly deteriorates.
They politely decline and that's where it ends.
Since the content holder still owns the rights to the program, the Archive cannot take a gamble and cover the recovery costs itself by using the footage commercially to earn that investment back.
As much as it would like to the Archive can’t keep absorbing those costs indefinitely simply because the public believes the material deserves to survive. The Archive is a business, and like any other business it has to remain financially sustainable.
Eventually, if no one is prepared to fund its preservation, and the archive cannot actually do anything else with it. The difficult decision is before me...
The items have to be disposed of.
And this is the part I HATE!
I KNOW the story behind how it survived, we should be celebrating, but no, that was not enough. Like many things in life it does all come down to money
Finding lost television is not enough. Good intentions are not enough. Being excited that something survives is not enough.
Sometimes in a bad month, the ratio of disposal overtakes the ratio of preserving.
The public often asks why broadcasters, production companies and archives threw so much television away in the past. They think this was something that "only happened back then", but the very real truth is that it still happens today!
If we genuinely want more of our television history to survive, independent archives such as the Australian Television Archive need practical financial support to make that possible.
Because without the resources to preserve it, even something found will inevitably become lost once again.
